Great Is Thy Faithfulness, Lord Unto Me

Frank laughs at me when we are riding in the car because a song will come on the radio and I will say...."Oh that is my favorite song!"  Five minutes later another song will come on and I will say again, "Oh that is my favorite song!"  If someone were to ask him what my favorite song is he would have to say, "all of them!"  Well, guess what.....I have a new favorite song/hymn....I heard it sung at women's conference not long ago and the woman who was singing it had just told the most heart wrenching story about her life.  I sat quietly....alone....with 25,000 other women listening to her story in words and then in song....and felt God warming my heart and filling me with peace.  I came home and got my red hymnal and looked at the words of the song and felt them burning into my memory and when I returned to work on Monday found myself singing the song to myself in the car.  I have been really drawn to the song and so I decided to do some research on it.  You know, find out the songs story and when I did thought I would share it with you so it can touch your heart like it has mine.  The song was written by a man named Thomas Obadiah Chisolm (1866-1960).  It seems that Chisolm had a difficult early adult life. His health was so fragile that there were periods of time when he was confined to bed, unable to work. Between bouts of illness he would have to push himself to put in extra hours at various jobs in order to make ends meet.  After coming to Christ at age 27, he found great comfort in the Scriptures, and in the fact that God was faithful to be his strength in time of illness and weakness, and to provide his needs. Lamentations 3:22-23 was one of his favorite scriptures: “It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness.”  While away from home on a missions trip, Thomas often wrote to one of his good friends, William Runyan, a relatively unknown musician. Several poems were exchanged in these letters. Runyan found one of Williams' poems so moving that he decided to compose a musical score to accompany the lyrics. Great is Thy Faithfulness was published in 1923.  It appears that for several years ,the hymn got very little recognition, until it was discovered by a Moody Bible Institute professor who loved it so much and requested it sung so often at chapel services, that the song became the unofficial theme song of the college. It was not until 1945 when George Beverly Shea began to sing Great is Thy Faithfulness at the Billy Graham evangelistic crusades, that the hymn was heard around the world. Thomas Chisolm died in 1960 at age 94. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 1,200 poems and hymns.  But Great is Thy Faithfulness will always and forever be my all time favorite.

 

Great is Thy Faithfulness

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.

Refrain:Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Refrain

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

Refrain

And because of His great faithfulness to me “I will sing of the mercies of the Lord for ever: with my mouth will I make known Thy faithfulness to all generations.” (Psalm 89:1)